After the Aftermath
by KatZen
Summary: The aftermath of rescues don't just affect International Rescue
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** **The Thunderbirds do not belong to me. They are the intellectual and actual property of Gerry Anderson and his affiliates. Any original characters are a product of my imagination.**

 **AN: Not a genre or subject matter I generally write about, but I figured I'll try anything once. Adult subject matter warning (hence the M rating) but hopefully not crossing the boundary into MA ratings instead.**

After the Aftermath

 _The aftermath of rescues don't just affect International Rescue_

With the rescue over and the post-rescue dissection complete, it's time to turn in for the night. He's tired and spent – physically, mentally and emotionally – as they all are, but for some reason, it's taking its toll particularly hard. The rescue hadn't been that successful; at the end of it all, more people, especially babies and children, were dead than there were alive. Wearily, he and his brothers drag themselves off to their room, bidding each other 'night' – never 'good night' after rescues like that one because there was nothing good about it. The doors close and what his brothers do behind them to unwind remains a secret. On an island as isolated as this, and a family as close as this, it's nice to know that some things are kept sacred.

With his brothers safely ensconced in their rooms, he lets his guard down ever so slightly. The door to his suite glides into place and he sags in relief when he hears the dead bolts seal their way into the lock. He strips himself off his uniform, strips off his responsibility until he's wearing nothing but the skin he was born in and leaves it in a soggy pile on the floor that resembles his wardrobe.

 _Need to clean up the floordrobe,_ he reminds himself, but now is not the time for that. Instead, he relishes in his new found freedom as he waits for the shower to warm up. Once the water's steaming, he steps under the shower head and lets the water hit him like blunt knives. The water's so hot it almost scalds his skin, but at the same time, his muscles release pent up stress and tension and he begins to loosen up, ever so slightly.

There's only so much the water can do, and this time, it's not enough. It's never enough when he's questioning the motives of humanity, whether it's worth all the time and effort into saving a species that seem so hell-bent on destroying themselves by destroying each other. After an excessively long soak under the water, he steps out from the shower and pads his way towards the bedroom, letting himself air dry. He's still wound up tighter than a spring and it's not good; he'll be in no shape for the next rescue. His eyes move of their own accord, towards the hangers where the propeller planes are stored, and it hits him. He knows what he's after, he knows what he needs and he knows what his next step is.

* * *

It's late at night, and she's bound to be asleep so chances are she won't hear him, but he knocks anyway. Courtesy, really, since he knows the code to unlock her door, but he won't ever use it against her. He'll lose too much if he does.

He wonders why he's here, back in the town that had been rocked by a disaster even International Rescue couldn't get them out of successfully. Rocked by the selfishness of humanity that thought killing innocent lives through acts of destruction and terrorism was the way to be heard.

Just as he's about to give up, turn tail and walk away, she opens the door. She stares at him, straight in the eye and sees what she needs to see. He's pretty sure that the look in his eyes, eyes much too old before their time, mirrors hers. The ache to be the one that gets held and protected instead of doing the holding and protecting of others, to have someone looking out for him and him alone instead of him looking out for the rest of the planet. The need to indulge, the desire to forget, for just one night.

He comes to her out of comfort, familiarity; they've been friends with benefits for a long time - since they first met - and for one night, it's easier to pretend a normal man with a normal life with her than it is to face reality. It's more palatable to act on a long standing mutual attraction than it is to go to sleep alone, wake up alone and possibly die alone.

She doesn't say a word but steps aside and lets him over the threshold. She's long since had her suspicions about his true occupation, but she'll never ask him about it. He knows she knows about him, but he'll never confront her about it. So they've reached an unspoken agreement; she won't ask and he won't tell her for certain, and they dance around the fact that they know each other knows, using it as an excuse to prevent them from forming anything more concrete than what they have now.

She holds her arms out to him and he walks straight into the embrace. No second thoughts, no hesitation.

 _No regrets,_ he thinks to himself. _Not tonight. Tonight it's about her and me. Tonight it's about feeling normal._

His arms wrap around her and he burrows his head against the joint that connects her neck to her shoulders. It's his favourite part of her, smells of popcorn and tastes of maple syrup, salty and sweet all wrapped up together. His lips brush against her skin and he can't resist a token lick. She gasps and tilts her head back, giving him more access.

In all the years that they've known each other, in all the years they've done this, he's always made the first move, the same way every time. She likes it that way, as does he. It's predictable but exhilarating for both of them. He likens it to a rollercoaster; he knows where the crests and the dips of the ride are, but still gets the knots in his stomach, still gets the head-rush from it every time.

Her fingers move automatically and curl around the hair at the nape of his neck and she raises his head so she can capture his lips lightly with hers. It's a turn on, a reassurance for him, all rolled into one.

He breaks off, touching his forehead to hers, willing himself to starve off the frenzied rush and savour the moment, a feat that's almost impossible because he knows that she needs this as bad as he does. She leans into him, eyes staring straight into his and he realises what she's trying to tell him; he can't go on like this much longer, he's got more lives than a cat but he's going through them too fast. She knows he knows it too, but tonight isn't about a reprimand, it's the chance to let go of their fears and worries and lose themselves in each other.

His lips move back to the joint between her neck and her shoulder, his hands fiddling with the straps of the singlet that she wears, sliding them down her arms. Her hands are no less busy, fudging buttons through the holes in his shirt. He tosses her singlet off to the side of the hallway at the same time she shrugs his shirt off. His hands and hers move in fluid motion downwards; his fingers claw at the elastic band on her pyjama shorts and hers fumble with the belt and the buttons on his jeans. The bottom half of their attire joins the top, strewn around the hallway. They pause and drink in the sight of each other, every last vestige of clothing deposited on the floor so that there are no barriers between them. It's been a while since they've done this – at least three months – and they both need to assess and catalogue changes.

To him, she looks like she's lost weight rapidly, something that only happens when she's stressed or worried and it hurts him even more on the inside; she's only like this because she's stressed and worried about him, about the dangers in his job they never talk about but are always aware of. He knows he's changed a lot more since the last time; there are more scars on his torso, more broken bones, more unexplained and mottled bruises, a more fractured and shattered heart from the things he's seen, from the things he's had to do on rescues.

 _Pick up the dead baby, hand it back to the mother, no emotion. Pretend it doesn't hurt, doesn't stab you in the gut every time you do it until you can't pretend any more. Until you can't keep the fractures on the inside and it leaks to the out._

He winces at the thought, traitorous brain for bringing up memories to a time he doesn't want to go to. So he stops thinking about the past and allows her hands to guide him back to the present, back to the moment he'll savour until they do this again.

Her hands flutter over scar tissue on his chest, perilously close to his heart. She blinks up at him, questioning, but he shakes his head. This is not the time for explanations. Another scar across his abdomen that her fingers run lightly over. He shakes his head again. She pulls him flush against her, as close as she can possibly get him and presses her lips to his shoulder blade, sparing a glance down a spinal column that's already riddled with cuts, bruises and scars that didn't quite heal right. Her hands move, tracking the changes, tracing over swelling that hasn't reduced, over newer injuries that are hidden behind old. She feels his head shake against her.

They stop and stare at each other again, the pressure intensifying between them. He grinds his hips on her and she feels him press against her thigh, hard and heavy. It spurs her on and her hands creep downwards past his belly button towards the crease between his hip and his thigh. She knows he's particularly sensitive, particularly ticklish there and she lets her fingers ghost over the area. He shudders and lets out a small laugh in a puff of breath, something she knows he can't quite control. Involuntary laugh or not, it's music to her ears to know that he's still capable of that.

He gives into her ministrations as she caresses and kisses her way down his torso, letting groans escape from his throat as the knot in his stomach tightens. Almost as if he were a wind-up toy, ready to be let loose. It becomes too much and he tugs her back up, capturing her lips in another searing kiss as he hefts her legs around his waist, pushes her back against the wall and he waits.

She groans, frustrated, until she sees the look in his eye, the unadulterated hurt that's been there since he first showed up on her doorstep. There's something that's happened in his job that's killing him from the inside out and he doesn't want his hurt to infiltrate other parts of his life. No matter how much he wants this, he wants to not hurt her even more; if she says no, he won't let it happen. And she can't bring herself to say no, she never has denied him; they both have different reasons for wanting each other, but the end result is the same. Why should she be the one to rob them of the relief they both need? Somewhere along the way of this ongoing friends-with-benefits, they became inextricably tangled with each other; it is too hard to separate one set of need and desire from the other.

And he waits on a knife edge, so ready to let his mind check out and cruise on autopilot while he's with her, but unable to move until at long last, she nods her head and yields underneath him, letting them both be as vulnerable as they need to be.

On the outset, it looks violent, rough, frenzied and rushed; they claw and bite at each other, she scratches at his back, careful not to break the skin, rakes her hand through his hair, and he grips and rubs his hands up and down her thighs, over the backs of her legs and backside, across her belly and over her breasts feverishly. He bites her lightly on the collar bone and she bucks against him, sending him into even more of a tailspin.

The appearance is deceptive. It's almost a paradox. There's harshness, but there's tenderness. It looks painful, but it's pain free. There's an outpouring of hatred and bitterness against the world, but there's love, lightness and hope in the moment too. There are two of them in this, but the reality is that it's just two parts of an entity coming together at last.

They fall over the edge at the same time, clinging onto each other as they ride it out together, lips ghosting over each other before sliding to the floor. Still intertwined with each other, she leans over him and drapes herself across his chest. He smiles briefly, more out of sated relief rather than anything else, before his eyes turn downcast and memories slither to the forefront of his mind.

There's the question burning between them, the inevitable that always crops up while they're lying silent in each others' arms.

 _Why?_

She goes first. Tells him about her day, about how she was called out to the rescue site – how he never saw her there, he'll never know, probably too preoccupied worrying over his brothers – about how a toddler had been placed on her gurney, barely clinging to life. About how she watched the light go out of the toddler's eyes and heard the rattle of the infant's last breath. About how more kids came to her in the same condition and she couldn't save a damned one.

He feels the tears sluice down his chest from her eyes and he holds her close and he cries with her. The tears may not have been on the outside, but he cries for all the kids lost in that rescue earlier on the inside. He carries the weight of them, the unrealised dreams and potential they had on his heart.

It's his turn now. He white lies, tells her he was passing through town for work when he heard about the incident and was one of the first civilians on the scene to help out with the rescue effort since conventional rescue operators were overrun, even though he knows that she will see straight through that and link his presence there with International Rescue. He knows that she won't call him out on it, that would break the illusion of pretense. He tells her that he heard the babies and kids crying, and that he's not sure what makes his gut twist more; the way they were in hysterics, panicked by the blood, the dark, the cold fear of not knowing what comes next that comes with acts of terror, the solid weight and warmth of them in his arms as he tried to save them, or the way the din slowly faded into silence as each scream dropped off one by one. He doesn't say any more after that. He doesn't have to. She knows how he feels because she's feeling it too.

There's something cathartic for him, lying in the arms of someone that understands, someone that he can talk to without saying a word. It is more healing than the useless platitudes that have been passed his way over the years. And as he lies there, he thinks – not for the first time – that if humanity was a little more understanding, compassionate and loving towards each other, the world would be a much better place.

He wonders if the presence of International Rescue could preach that to the world, and he thinks that if it can, then he's damn proud to be part of that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: see chapter one**

 **AN: Not a genre or subject matter I generally write about, but I figured I'll try anything once. Adult subject matter warning (hence the M rating) but hopefully not crossing the boundary into MA ratings instead. I wasn't supposed to add more to this, but recent world events and a PM from Teobi got me thinking more about this story, so I opened up a word document and let things flow** **. I wasn't going to publish it either, but then I figured I might as well, since it was written. So this is what it is. Hope you guys like it.**

The Day After the Aftermath 

The morning light breaks over the horizon and glimmers into the hallway. He squints against it, feeling the dead weight of her across his torso, his arms around her holding her close. He looks down, sees dried tear tracks on her face and gets bolted back to the present. He remembers the how and the why that led him to this moment and his mood sours. She's still asleep, somewhat restless, and he can't bring himself to wake her up just because he's awake. Instead, he shifts her slightly and carries her to the sofa so that she can sleep off the bad memories, the same way he'd sleep off a bad hangover, even though he knows this is futile. Trying to sleep failure away has never worked for him, and he knows enough about her to know that if it doesn't work for him, it won't work for her.

He stretches out his spine, compressed awkwardly from leaning sideways against the wall without moving throughout the night and heads into the kitchen as his stomach grumbles.

Another futile thing, he thinks. Past experience tells him that there will be little in her fridge or her pantry – she is not much of a cook and they often opt for takeout instead of subjecting themselves to the burnt offerings she would inevitably create. He is also not much of a cook, but he knows enough to sustain himself. Pancakes are his specialty and he is immensely surprised to find everything he needs in her kitchen.

He starts his task – anything to keep his mind busy from reliving yesterday – and gets so engrossed he doesn't realise she's awake until her hands trace over the soft, blue bruising under both his shoulder blades.

She asks him when.

Three rescues ago, he thinks, but he doesn't say it out loud. Three rescues ago when he was scaling a cliff face and the limestone eroded beneath his feet while he was holding onto a stranded climber. The harness he was wearing worked, jerking both him and his rescuee violently as they stopped plummeting. The reward? Swelling and bruising around his ribs, his groin and his shoulders, wherever the harness looped around his body. Not that he was going to complain about it; if swelling and bruising was the price to pay for life, he would pay it every time.

They look like angel wings, she says, and he laughs without humour. He's no angel, and with the things he's had to do, decisions he's had to make, he knows that when his time comes, he's destined for hell.

He can feel her eyeing other injuries on his spine. He thinks about getting tattoos done just to make them less conspicuous; zippers could work as a nice way of integrating his body into his art, but then he thinks of how many zippers he would need to mask the scars and mentally rejects the idea.

Instead, he distracts her by placing pancakes in front of her. He tells her to eat up, and that he'll make her as many as she wants. His way of rectifying her rapid weight loss; he's at fault because he knows she worries for him every time International Rescue gets called out, both acutely aware of the dangers that are present in both their jobs, even though they'll never call each other out on it.

He wonders if she's working again today, and she shrugs her shoulders. Yes and no. Yes, she's working, but not in the field. Instead she has a mandatory counselling session, as do all emergency personnel that was there in the aftermath. He understands; International Rescue has a similar thing, except that their counselling sessions include a case of beer, a brother and a sympathetic ear. It works well enough for them, but he knows that one day, it will not work - there are some horrors he will never divulge to his brothers - and that they will have to get a professional in. He has yet to square that with his father, but he knows that it would be a battle worth fighting.

She sits at the breakfast bar while he continues to batter up, flicks on the television. The morning newscast fills the room, pictures of the devastation and destruction, the chaos, the panic and the mass disorder. The extended report outlines how hospitals have been filled beyond their capacity, how they're running low on supplies, how many parents have missing children, or worse, have lost them completely. The entire town has been declared a disaster zone to gain maximum funding from the government to rebuild, but they both know that no amount of money can help restructure a shattered life.

The cleanup starts today, the news reports, and that volunteers are needed to help as the cleanup is of a massive scale. She spares him a glance as he stands at the stove, flipping pancakes, notes the way his posture has changed, straightened by resolve and they both know where he's spending the rest of his day.

* * *

It's been a long day and he wearily trudges up to the front door, covered in grime, dust, sweat and blood, a storm cloud hovering over him. Now that they've established that he's staying on for the next day or so, he's perfectly happy to use the code to her place to come and go as he pleases. He expects her to be home, but he doesn't expect company. He is surprised to hear twin voices mingling together from the living room.

She sits on one end of the sofa, legs curled up underneath her while her companion sits on the other edge of the sofa. She waves at him in acknowledgement and introduces the man on the other end of the sofa as the paramedic that works with her. Her work husband, he had once joked with her, eons ago, when they were still young and naive, but it is nice to put a face to a name. It is nice to know that even when he goes, she still has some support to get her through this.

He excuses himself from the room, indicating that he's heading upstairs for a shower. He can see her paramedic partner stand up, ready to make tracks, and he urges him not to leave on his account. A few moments later, he hears the front door close and knows that the other paramedic has left.

He drags a body too old before its time and a splintered heart up the stairs and grabs a spare change of clothes and towel from the spare cupboard in her room before heading into the tiled bathroom and closing the door behind him. He doesn't bother with the lock since it's broken and the landlord hasn't fixed it yet. A hand, caked in grit and dirt, reaches in and lets the water cascade down.

His jeans are the first thing to hit the floor, ripped and torn and carrying the debris of what was once a vibrant, lively town. Shirt next, which is in the same state as his jeans. Undies too, even they haven't remained unsullied, and he steps over the hob and lets the water scald his back.

She, on the other hand, stands at the top of the stairs and listens to the waterfall coming from her bathroom. She knows he likes his showers like he likes sex – hot, fast and furious – but the water falling is too fast, the steam curling around the gaps in the door indicate that the water is too hot, and she knows that he is absolutely furious. She knows that he's burning himself under the water, punishing himself because that's what she would do too. So she does what he did when their roles were reversed back when they first started this; she strips off and steps into the shower, unsurprised to hear epitaphs for each unknown he had recovered, punctuated by small gasps.

He doesn't even register her presence until she's standing behind him and her arms wrap around his ribcage, stroking up and down, cheek pressed against his scapula. He listens as she murmurs at him to let it go.

Easier said than done. Giving into emotions has never been his thing; he has always been the constant, the stable rock for his brothers.

She swivels him around in her arms, pulls his head down to hers and it reminds him that his brothers aren't here, it's just him and her.

Let it go, she repeats, and this time it's easier. He trembles as he wars with himself, but eventually he gives in and succumbs. In some deep reserve somewhere, he knows that it's not healthy to do what he does, to bury how he feels, and he realises that this is why he comes to her, this is why they work; he doesn't have to be the strong one and she won't judge him for it.

His eyelids close and to anyone else, it would be impossible for them to distinguish between the water and the tears that are slowly breaking forth from his eyes. She just holds him as he breaks down, exhaustion and frustration and sheer disgust at the state humanity's in rising to the surface, and before she knows it, she's breaking down with him, for all the same reasons. She can feel his body react to being pressed up against her as his lips brush lightly over the side of her neck. He buries his head next to her shoulder, hands roaming over her torso while his legs nudge her thighs apart slightly. Her body is no different; being in close proximity to a hot, wet, naked Tracy boy is enough to set anyone off, and her hands move up and down his spine and around his abdomen of their own accord, as much an act of comfort as an act of encouragement, asking without asking him not to stop.

He tells her he won't forget what's happened, can't forget, as they stumble to the recess in the shower wall, and she tells him that she doesn't expect him to forget as she pushes him to sit down and straddles him. It's been a rough day for both of them, both reliving yesterday in their own way; him with the clean up and recovery process, her with rehashing each sordid detail at that damned therapy session.

He raises a questioning eyebrow at her as she lowers herself onto him, grinding slowly against his hips. A confession, he knows, both stark and poignant is brewing and he knows her well enough to know that if he pushes her into blurting it out, she won't. So he waits as she swallows and leans her forehead against his.

She made the mistake, she begins eventually. She stopped at one of the wards at the hospital after the counselling session to see how her friends – doctors and nurses that she knew from various paramedic runs to the emergency department – were holding up and one of the patients recognised her and called her over. Couldn't ignore the patient after that, she huffs in a self depreciating way, and he is inclined to agree with her. He has never been able to ignore the desperate pleas of family members at rescue sites, so he can empathise completely.

She wishes she had ignored the patient. Turned out that the patient was a mother of one of the many toddlers, babies and children that had come across her gurney. She had treated the child while her partner had treated the mother.

He closes his eyes, faintly aware of where this is heading, and he understands why she's with him right now, why she climbed into the shower with him, why she straddled him, why she pursued him so aggresively instead of the other way around. Anything to make them dull out the pain, anything to fill them up and make them feel less empty on the inside.

The mother asked her about her child. The mother didn't even know her baby had not survived, she says and he can sense the unshed tears welling up under her eyelids, feel her rocking against him intensify. Didn't even know which baby the patient was a mother to, that was how many babies had gone across her stretcher yesterday. She had to tell the mother that her child had died, white-lying and saying that the baby hadn't suffered when in reality they all had, and his heart bleeds for her. There are few things worse in life than having to deliver heart breaking news, something he knows from personal experience.

The speed of him rocking on her increases until he matches her and they move in fluid motion together. She grasps the sides of his face in her hands, but he shakes his head. He's not about to compound her pain by telling her about the things that he saw, the unrecovered babies that had been disfigured and deformed after being trapped under debris, the children that were buried alive, staring into a future of nothing, the adults that had passed with their faces frozen in contorted agony, the panic and confusion that had been forever imprinted in the depths of their unseeing eyes.

Even though they both need this, both need to be held and comforted, he realises that she needs to have him in her, have him hold her and tell her that everything will be alright in the end more than he needs her to do that for him, and he's okay with that. This is not sex out of some desperate need to reaffirm life – it was last night, but it's not anymore – this is sex where he puts her needs above his, for both of them it's sex as a means of recovery.

She trembles and shudders in his arms and that sends him over the edge before they slow down to a still, doing little more than staring at each other. She eventually climbs off him and reaches for a towel.

Pizza and beer'll be waiting in the kitchen once he's done, she says, wrapping herself up in the towel, and he knows that it will be time for his confession soon. The prospect of having food, drink, someone that isn't a family member that, to some extent, understands what he's going through, and a night that stretches out in front of them to talk, vent and heal, is one that sits quite well with him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: see chapter one**

 **AN: Not a genre or subject matter I generally write about, but I figured I'll try anything once. Not M-rated as a chapter, but previous chapters are M-rated, so this is where the story says.**

Winding Down the Aftermath

True to her word, there is pizza, beer and a Disney movie – a welcome surprise; not many people know this, but watching Disney movies make him feel like a child again, something he appreciates after times like this – ready and waiting for him when he makes it out of the shower and into the kitchen, towel wrapped snugly around his hips. No point in putting on clothes when at some point in time, they're just going to come off again, he justifies as she cocks her head with a slight grin when she sees him. It's all about efficiency, he reminds her.

They don't bother with plates, or cutlery or anything fancy; instead, they just eat the pizza out of the box, stringy cheese and tomato sauce leaking everywhere as he tells her about the day he had. Dispassionate, removed, detached. The only way he'd get through it. Almost as though it's the bare bones of what he's seen, but he knows she can fill in the gaps and colour in the picture to garner what really went on.

Sober silence dominates the room as his voice dies out. He mentally prepares himself to get out there the next day and do it all again. Tomorrow, they both know, will be his last day with her; it always works like that. He gets seventy-two hours of leave after a catastrophe like this, to deal with it however he sees fit, and then he's expected to be back at Base, ready for another call out. Him leaving so soon, after such a disaster, is not something she wants him to do, not until she's sure he's unwound and distressed enough to not let it cloud his judgement, but she's never asked him not to go back to a job she's not supposed to know about because she knows he'll ignore her request and do it anyway.

She can sense he's still stressed, so she crawls behind him and manipulates the muscles, tense as anything, in his shoulders and neck. He almost melts into her hands, letting her work out the knots, the aches and the pains that comes part and parcel of his job, only leaving to set up the movie so they can watch it and unwind, later heading up to her bed with her arm around his waist and his around her shoulder.

* * *

They lie together naked under the sheets, legs and arms entwined, making the most of what little time they have left together. He enjoys the feel of her in his arms – he and his brothers go too long without someone to hold when the going gets tough, and they're all red-blooded males; they all have needs that go unfulfilled at times – and he intends to savour the opportunity every moment he gets.

Her head rests against his shoulders, hair fanning out behind her as she relishes the moments she has with him. There's a question playing on her mind – has been playing on her mind for a while now – and she thinks _if not now, then when?_ After all, in both their lines of work, they never know if the time that they spend with each other is the last time that they'll spend with each other.

So she steels her nerves, although she's not sure why she's nervous, pushes herself so that her elbow props up her head and neck and she asks him if he ever wants kids.

She almost cracks up into hysterics at the way his body seems to draw to attention, at the way he looks stunned and incredulous and she realises what's probably going through his mind. She reassures him, no, she's not pregnant with their love child, at least, not yet anyway. She's just curious.

It's not something he hasn't thought about before, and the truth is, he just doesn't know. He thinks about the things he's seen recently, the despair he feels when he realises how low humanity's sunk. He wonders how he can bring himself to bring a child into a world that's screwed up as bad as the one he lives in; he thinks… no, he knows that if he were a father, it would be his responsibility to protect and shelter his babies, but he also knows that he can't protect them from everything. He has seen the despair parents go through when they realise their children are in the midst of danger at a rescue site, the fear of not knowing what their baby's going through letting their imagination is run wild as they expect the worst possible scenario to occur.

All of that's a moot point to him, though, since he knows that his having a child is contingent upon finding the right woman to have the baby with, and in his line of work, most of the women he meet are in extremis or equally as damaged, scarred and emotionally worn out as him. Not exactly what he wants, so he keeps his heart guarded and only allows a few select people through. Belonging to International Rescue means that dating opportunities are thin on the ground.

He knows the pain he goes through when he has to recover bodies, and he's acutely aware that these are the bodies of strangers. It cuts him to the quick every time he rolls his hands over someone's eyelids to close them, every time he zips up a body bag, and he thinks that if he feels that bad for strangers, it will be infinitely worse when it is someone he loves unconditionally. Of all of the men in International Rescue, he has always been one of the stronger ones emotionally; he doesn't think he is strong enough to open himself up to that vulnerability.

He won't lie; when he was a teenager and various people – teachers, parents of friends, college admissions interviewers, just to name a few – asked him where he saw himself in fifteen years. He wasn't too sure of anything then, except for the fact that he hoped he'd have the beginnings of his own family, and even though turning thirty is still a while off yet, he is no closer to achieving that than he was as a teenager. He remembers the way his dad's eyes would light up when he and his brothers gave him a hug when they were much younger and he knows that he wants that for himself, at some point in time. He knows that he'd be up for the challenge of sleepless nights, stinking diapers and spit up, only to love and cherish those moments with someone that was so completely reliant on him to care for them. Not to mention the fact that his grandmother has been presenting not-so-subtle hints about carrying on the Tracy name to him and his brothers.

So yes, he does want kids one day, but the fact that he would bring his child into a world that's fuelled with nothing but hatred and loathing for others does not sit well with him. He doesn't think he can subject his children to that, but he wars within himself because he thinks that if he could teach his children compassion, they could be the kids that save them all.

He shrugs nonchalantly, if the timing's right, if he's with the right woman, and if it's meant to happen, it will. Questioning eyes stare down at her and he feels her squirm under his gaze.

She, like him, takes her time in pondering the question. She has seen some awful things in her time as a paramedic - people missing half their face, suffering from third degree burns with muscle and sinew exposed to the elements after a propane tank exploded, children that tasered because they were caught up in the midst of a peaceful protest that wasn't so peaceful – but the things that she has seen gives her hope that she can raise any children she has to rise above it, to become better humans than the ones in her generation. For her, having kids is non-negotiable; she just has to find a willing man to have the kid with.

He chuckles at how similar their responses are, at how similar they are and he half jokes that if they're both single and available by the time they're thirty, they should just cut their losses, get together and have a baby with each other. She huffs lightly and snarks that she's not so desperate to have to settle for him, but it is said with gentle humour. They both know she doesn't really mean it as she sticks her hand out to him to seal the deal.

She wriggles out of his arms and moves off the bed towards the bathroom. Shower, she tells him, grabbing some clothes to change into and her towel. He throws her a slight grin, an invitation. He does not expect it to be denied.

No, she says, because she actually wants a shower, nothing more and nothing less, and she knows that if he joins her, they won't shower.

He watches her disappear and leans back into the pillow. It's his last day, and there's something that he needs to do while he's here. It's almost a tradition for him – on his last day he always does this, sometimes with her company and sometimes without – but it cleanses his soul in more ways than one and it has saved his sanity. It is something that allows him to live with the decisions he's made in the past.

With that in mind, he swings out of the bed and heads to the kitchen, popping his head into the bathroom. He asks if she'll be ready to go after breakfast. After you've showered, she agrees.

He feels content as he pulls out bowls and boxes of cereal. Even though there's a slight melancholy in him at having to leave a semi-normal life with her behind in the evening when he leaves to head back to Base, he feels content with the plans for the day, knowing that something this week is starting to go right.


End file.
